ws, the Duc de Broglie, then French Minister for Foreign
Affairs, issued an Ordinance suspending the operation of the Treaty in
regard to the offending Canton, and followed this up by severing
diplomatic relations and by placing a military cordon on the
frontier.[68] The King himself approved the action of his Minister in an
energetic speech to a deputation of the Consistoire Israelite. However,
in 1835 the Ordinance was withdrawn, and until 1850 the peace was more
or less preserved by a tacit _modus vivendi_.

The resistance of France was rendered difficult, partly by perplexities
of general politics, but more immediately by the fact that the question
was a larger one than it had at first appeared. In February 1840 a
French Jew had been refused a _permis de sejour_ by the police of
Dresden on the ground that Jews were not permitted to reside in the
city. The case was precisely similar to that of Switzerland, and M.
Guizot, who was then Foreign Minister, hesitated to take up a strong
attitude as he was afraid that the precedent might involve him in
complications with other countries.[69] Nevertheless, French public
opinion was aroused, and the Chamber, after a lively debate, called upon
the Government to make suitable representations to Saxony.[70] In 1850 a
Commercial Treaty between the United States and Switzerland was signed
at Berne, but the American Senate, on the advice of the President,
refused to ratify it because it discriminated against
non-Christians.[71] This was followed almost immediately by a revival of
the anti-Semitic activity of the Basle police, chiefly at the expense of
French Jews resident in the Canton. The French Government again
protested energetically and insisted on the withdrawal of the police
measures. The demand was sulkily complied with, the Cantonal Government
reserving what they called "the principle."[72]

In 1855 a new phase of the conflict was opened by the negotiation of two
further Commercial Treaties with Switzerland--one by Great Britain and
the other by the United States--in both of which the invidious
reservations, substantially as in the French Treaty of 1827, were
retained.[73] Some mystery attaches to the circumstances in which these
treaties were signed and ratified,[74] but the probable explanation is
that the Swiss negotiators promised in effect that there should be no
discrimination. This conjecture is confirmed by the action of the
Federal Assembly in the following year,